To explore how writers create interesting characters

Key Stage 1

English

Honey and Trouble: recycled story (character)

﻿Hi, everyone. Miss Fryer here, back for lesson seven of our Honey and Trouble character unit. In lesson six, we boxed up our new recycled story and made a character plan for one of our recycled animal friends. I also left you with a piece of trivia. I asked you how many eggs you thought crocodiles laid. You might have seen a bird's nest, but how about a crocodile nest? How many eggs do you think they lay? 10, 20, more than that? More than 30? Well, let me tell you that Nile crocodiles can lay up to 80 eggs at a time, 80. I mean, some of them might get smushed, some of them might get eaten by other animals, but imagine if all 80 hatched. That's a lot of baby crocodiles. We're going to start today with a speaking activity. Then we're going to be reading as a writer before writing some words of our own together, before you do your own independent writing. In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or paper, a pencil, and your brain. So pause the video now, if you need to get any of those things. We're going to do some hot seating for our speaking activity today. And I've asked Zorro to help me. When we hot seat, we need to pretend to be a character in a story we are studying. And then somebody is going to ask us questions and we have to answer in role using their voice and saying things that they would say. When we are hot seating, we need to make sure we use good questions. And that means using question words. They're on your screen, let's read them. Who, what, where, when, why, how. Let's read them one more time, just to be sure. Who, what, where, when, why, how. Now I'm going to be role playing today as Sister Python. So let's see if Zorro can ask me some good questions. Hello, everybody. I hear you have quesssstions. Ah, where do I live? Well, I live in the foresssst near the river. What do I eat? Well, I eat all kinds of mammals and birds and reptiles. I have a very long body and I wrap it around the animals and squeeze them before I eat them. How long am I? Well, I am five metres long, but some of my family are between four and six meterssss. Who has visited me today? Well, a masssster stork came by earlier. When did he come? Well, he came when I was ssssun bathing on my favourite rock. He annoyed me. I was trying to resssst. So I bit him. Why did I bite him? Well, he was the one that asked me for trouble. Hi everyone. It's me, Miss Fryer, could you tell? See if you can have a go at hot seating as one of the characters in the story. Get somebody like one of your friends or an adult, or even one of your teddies to ask you some why, who, what, where, or when or how questions and see if you can answer them like the character in the story. Pause the video now to have a go at hot seating yourself. Now we're going to be reading as a writer. We're going to use our writing toolkits, to have read-a-passage about Sister Python and see if we can get any clues about her main inner quality. If you've printed the downloadable reading extract, it's time to get it now. If you haven't, don't worry, you can read along with the screen, like me. Are you ready to read? Put your reading finger underneath the first word, which is, s, i, s, t, er, sister. Are you ready? Off we go. Sister Python lay coiled on the smooth flat rock. Five metres of perfectly smooth scales, in all shades of yellow, brown and tan shimmered in the sun. She had thought about going for a swim in the river, but she was so relaxed and her belly was full. Swimming was such hard work. She slowly turned her head in the direction of the sound of footsteps, silently cursing the visitor for disturbing her rest. "Good morning, young ssssssstork," she hissed, sleepily. Stork took a step back as she yawned, exposing her sharp fangs. Now, here's our writing toolkit about characters we care about. We should have this really into our heads by now. We want to decide on the main inner quality of our characters. So we're going to be looking today at Sister Python. We want to be looking for clues about her physical appearance and dress. We want to be looking for clues about her actions, because they'll show her personality, about her speech, how she talks, and about her thoughts and feelings. While you were reading, I wonder if you found any clues about Sister Python's physical appearance and dress. Can you see any clues in the text about what she looks like? Point to them if you can spot them. What can you see? Anything about what she looks like. Here's some. I can see it says that she is five metres. She has five metres of perfectly smooth scales. That tells me two things about her. She's five metres long, which we knew from our speaking activity, and that she has perfectly smooth scales. We also can see that her scales are yellow, brown, and tan. So we know what colours they are. There's something else as well. Look at the button. It tells us that she has sharp fangs. So that's something else about what she looks like. Now let's look for some clues about her actions, because they will tell us about her personality. Can you spot any actions that she does? Anything that she does that might give us some clues. Point to them if you can see them. Ah, she lays coiled. She lays coiled. So she's not moving around a lot. She's laying coiled. That might give us a little bit of a picture about her. Let's see if we can think of anything else, spot anything else. Oh, here's lots. So she lays coiled. She also slowly turns her head, and she is resting. So she's obviously quite a slow, sleepy kind of character. She also yawns and exposes her sharp fangs. So, she's lying down, she's slowly moves, and she's resting and yawning. So that might tell me that she's either slow or maybe she's even a bit lazy. Maybe she's a bit of a lazy character. However, she does expose her sharp fangs. And that tells me that she wants to everyone to know that even though she's a bit sleepy, she's still very dangerous. Hmm, wouldn't want to mess with her. Let's look next at her speech. Are there any clues about what she says or how she says things? Let's have a look. What can we see? Ah, so she says, "Good morning, young ssssssstork." So she uses that hissing voice, isn't it? It says, she hissed. So we know that her voice sounds like a hiss, because she's a big snake. But she does say good morning, so she must be rather polite, or at least pretending to be. But she does say it sleepily. So that's another clue about what her personality is, suggested by her action, isn't it? Maybe she's a bit lazy, a bit slow or a bit sleepy. Okay, last thing now. Let's have a look at thoughts and feelings. Any clues about what she is thinking or what she is feeling? Oh, here's some. So, she thought about going for a swim. Indian rock pythons are actually really good swimmers. I guess that's why she said earlier in our speaking activity that she lives by the river. They really like living near water, cause they're really good at swimming. She is relaxed. So she's feeling relaxed, and she's thinking about going for a swim, but her belly is full and she thinks that swimming is hard work. So I think this is what we were saying earlier. I think she's a bit lazy. She doesn't want to do anything that's too hard or energetic. She just wants to relax. And when Stork comes and disturbs her, she silently curses him. She's like, maybe looking up at the sky, maybe rolling her eyes a little bit. Although actually, snakes can't move their eyes on their own, so I doubt she'll be doing that. But she silently curses him. If she was doing it out loud, she'd be like, "Oh, why are you disturbing me?" But she doesn't say it out loud. She does it in her head. Lots of clues here about what Sister Python's character is like. Now that we've had a go at practising our reading as a writer, now we're going to write as a writer, because that's what we're all going to be. We are all storytellers and we're all going to be writing a story. Now, if you've got your recycled character outline from lesson three, get it now. That is your outline of your recycled character. Mine's a stork. Yours might be an eagle or a peacock or something of your own choosing. Whatever it is, grab it now, pause the video if you need to and meet me back here. We're going to add to our main character outline so that we can do our actual writing in lessons eight, nine, and 10. We've already talked about how our main character is going to have the same personality and main inner quality as the first character, the monkey. So I'm not going to be writing down some actions, thoughts, or feelings today, because those are going to be the same. However, our new character might speak in a different way because they're a different animal. So they might have a different voice and they might even say slightly different things. They might use different words. Now storks have a very sort of strange voice. When they make their noises, it sounds very different to what you might think a bird sounds like. Have a little listen to this. Did you hear that? Is that what you were expecting? Storks have got a kind of clattering clicking kind of sound, don't they? So I might use some of those types of words in my description today. So the first thing I'm going to do is draw, just like we did for our monkey, a big speech bubble to show that we are writing words about his speech. Then I'm going to choose a word about how he talks. I think I'm going to describe it as, I liked my word clattering, because he's kind of knocking his beak together, clattering it together quickly. That's what it sounds like that. So I'm going to say, c, l, a, t, double letter, er, ing, clattering. I think when he's saying his words, cause obviously real storks don't say words, so we haven't got any recordings of that one. When he's saying his words, I think he uses quite a high pitched voice. Pitch is how high or low your voice is. We can talk in a low voice or in a high voice. I think the stork talks in quite a high voice, with his clattering beak in his high voice. So I'm going to write the word high in my box, high pitched voice. So, h, igh, our trigraph -igh. High p, i, tch. Pitch has got that TCH because it's a short vowel sound, that i sound. And it's a past tense word, so I've got E-D on the end. Clattering, high pitched. I wonder if I can think of one more word about the stork's voice. I know, he clatters his beak together very quickly, doesn't he? So I think the stork probably talks quite quickly too. I'm going to use that as my third word, qu, i, ck, quick. That's a one-syllable word, isn't it, with a short vowel sound, so that means a C-K. That was one of our spellings from unit seven. Q, u, qu, i, ck, l, happy e, quickly. So he talks in a clattering voice, he talks with a high pitched voice, and he talks quickly. All of these things together, I think, will hopefully make him sound foolish, which is still his main inner quality, remember. So when you're thinking of your character's voice today, whether it's a stork, a peacock, an eagle or something else, make sure it sounds at least a little bit foolish. Now we're going to use those words we've just written in our speech bubbles to write some independent sentences. So I want to make sure that I use the adjectives that I've just thought of. The adjective clattering, high pitched, and well, this is an adverb really, but we know he talks quickly. It describes how he talks. So I need to use those in my sentences. Okay, I'm ready to write. So I want to use all three of those words in my sentences. So I think I'm going to try and go for them all at the same time. I think what I'm going to write is: The stork spoke quickly in a high pitched clattering voice. That's a long sentence, isn't it? Let's tap out the first bit. The stork spoke quickly. Can you tap it out on your head for me? The stork spoke quickly. On your shoulders. The stork spoke quickly. On your nose. The stork spoke quickly. On your fingers. The stork spoke quickly. How many words? Four, four words. The stork spoke quickly. We're going to start off with a capital letter for my sight word, the. The, T-H-E spells the, finger space, stork, s, t, or, k, stork, s, t, or, k, stork, has a digraph before the k, so we just need a K. The stork spoke, s, p, o-e, k, spoke, s, p, o-e, that's a split digraph, phase five, spoke, and now quickly, qu, i, ck, l, y, quickly, qu, i, ck, l, y. The stork spoke quickly. Now the second part of my sentence, in a high pitched clattering voice. Let's tap that one out on our head, in a high pitched clattering voice. On your shoulders. In a high pitched clattering voice. On your chin. In a high pitched, cluttering voice. How many on your fingers? In a high pitched clattering voice. How many words? Six, six words. I'm doing a new word, so I need a finger space, in, i, n, a, high, h, igh, h, igh, I-G-H, high, pitched now, p, i, tch, T-C-H because of the short i, pitched, clattering, c, l, a, t, er, i, ng, lots of sounds, c, l, a, t, er, i, ng, clattering. And that tricky word, voice, voice is a tricky word, v, oi, and then the s sound at the end of voice is with a C-E. What do we still need at the end, a full stop. Amazing. So let's read our sentence together, through. The stork spoke quickly in a high pitched clattering voice. Very good. That's a very complicated sentence, isn't it? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 words. But we know exactly how he speaks. I can just hear it, can't you? High pitched and clattering, speaking quickly. What is he going to say? What is he going to say in his high pitched cluttering voice? I wonder if we can write one of our exclamations that we were practising the other day. Maybe something like, "That's not trouble, that's honey." Maybe let's do that. Let's speak in our high pitched clattering voice quickly. That's not trouble, that's honey. Can we do that? High-pitched, clattering, and quick. That's not trouble, that's honey. High pitched. It's very difficult to do clattering with a human voice, isn't it. But it's easy for a stork. I'm going to write, "That's not trouble, that's honey." Ready for my speech. That's not trouble. That's honey. So I have my speech marks, cause I'm writing speech. Th, a, t, have we got an apostrophe? Yes, cause it's that's. That's a very tricky spelling. Isn't it? Trust me though, that's spelt like that. That's not, n, o, t. Now we've got that tricky word, trouble, haven't we. We can't sound it out, we just have to remember it's spelled like this, T-R-O-U-B-L-E, trouble. We've read that a lot in our reading, haven't we? That's not trouble. That's again, th, a, t, s, that's honey, H-O-N-E-Y, another tricky word. "That's not trouble, that's honey." And he's saying it with a big feeling. So what does he need? An exclamation mark. "That's not trouble, that's honey!" High pitched and quick. Amazing. Time for you to have a go now. Have a go at writing your sentences with something that your recycled character says. Here's two challenges for you. See if you can use one of your adjectives to describe how they speak. My challenge two, is about using an exclamation mark to show a big feeling. So think of something they said, like I did, and use your exclamation mark at the end. Pause the video now to complete your task. And that's it for our learning today. Hopefully you have got all the tools now that you need to start writing your recycled story section in lessons eight, nine, and 10. Trivia time now. We were reading earlier about Sister Python. So I have a python fact for you today. Now we've been talking about Indian rock pythons today, and as Sisters Python herself told you earlier, they grow between four and six metres long. The longest kind of python in the world is a Burmese python. So how long do you think they grow? Indian rocks between four and six metres? Burmese pythons are longer. How long do you think a Burmese python is? Maybe you could mark it out outside with a piece of chalk on the pavement, or you could see if you could unwind a ball of string and see if you can think of the length of a Burmese Python. Anyway, have a sensible guess, and I will tell you at the start of lesson eight. Bye.

To explore how writers create interesting characters

To explore how writers create interesting characters

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UnitEnglish / Honey and Trouble: recycled story (character)

English